Assembling Animal Communication

For much of the 20th century, scholars considered language to be what defined the
human. In screech and roar, animals couldn't match the complexity – the sheer sophistication
– of human language. This exhibition proposes to think of animal language in a different
way: what if it didn't aspire to human grammar and syntax? What if it didn't simply
occur within, but co-evolved with, an environment? When Deleuze and Guattari used
the word "ritournelle" (refrain) to describe bird songs, they weren't simply referring to the mundanely
repetitious nature of bird language. Animal communication, they envisioned, took place
in an emergent environmental field that moved in deep, molecular rhythm. Another term
they used, "assemblage" – think of a bee swarm, moving with the wind, or a flock of
birds, flying in loose unison – captures this more dynamic understanding of the way
animals communicate with one another. Speech as environmental resonance; utterance
cradled by context. Look closer. Listen. Enter the assemblage of animal communication.